NASA Captures A Powerful Pulse Of Energy Coming Out Of A Black Hole: Discovery Explains On How Mysterious Flares Form

Black holes can emit gigantic pulses of energy, but
what bases these eruptions has long been a mystery. Now, scientists have found,
for the first time ever that a supermassive black hole's burst was triggered by
the discharge of its corona. This is a mysterious source of extremely energetic
particles nearby black holes that produce X-ray light. This vital discovery was
made possible from data gathered by NASA’s Swift Observatory and the Nuclear
Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR). According to Dan Wilkins of Saint Mary's University in Halifax, Canada, “This is the first time we have been able
to link the launching of the corona to a flare,' said. This will help us
understand how supermassive black holes power some of the brightest objects in
the universe.”

Supermassive black holes don't reflect any light
themselves, but they are frequently surrounded by disks of hot, shining
material. The gravity of a black hole tugs spinning gas into it, heating this
material and triggering it to sparkle with several types of light. Another cause
of radiation near a black hole is the corona. Coronas are made of extremely
energetic particles that produce X-ray light, but data and observations about
their appearance, and how they come to existence, are uncertain. Astronomers propose
that coronas have one of two possible shapes. According to the 'lamppost' model
they are dense sources of light, alike to light bulbs that sit above and also below
the black hole, along its rotation axis.

The second model suggests that the coronas are
spread out more pretentiously, either as a bigger cloud which surround the
black hole, or as a 'sandwich' that encloses the surrounding disk of material
like cuts of bread.

The recently collected data back the 'lamppost'
model - and validate, in the best detail yet, how the light-bulb-like coronas travel.

The observations started when Swift, which observer
the sky for cosmic outbreaks of X-rays and gamma rays, spotted a huge flare
coming from the supermassive black hole recognized as Markarian 335, or Mrk
335, situated 324 million light-years away in the constellation Pegasus.

This supermassive black hole, which resides at the center
of a galaxy, was once one of the perkiest X-ray sources in the sky. The results were published in journal Nature.

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NASA Captures A Powerful Pulse Of Energy Coming Out Of A Black Hole: Discovery Explains On How Mysterious Flares Form
Reviewed by Umer Abrar
on
10/28/2015
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